NLF and PAVN battle tactics comprised a flexible mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare battle tactics used by the Main Force of the People's Liberation Armed Forces (known as the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong in the West) and the NVA (People's Army-Vietnam) to defeat their U.S. and South Vietnamese (GVN/ARVN) opponents during the Vietnam War.[1]
The NLF was an umbrella of front groups to conduct the insurgency in South Vietnam. The NLF was affiliated with independent groups and sympathizers. The armed wing of the NLF was regional and local guerrillas, and the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF). The PLAF was the "Main Force" – the Chu Luc full-time soldiers of the NLF's military muscle. Many histories lump both the NLF and the armed wing under the term "Viet Cong" in common usage. Both were tightly interwoven and were in turn controlled by the North.[2][3]:12–239 Others consider the Viet Cong to primarily refer to the armed elements.[4] The term PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam) identifies regular troops of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Collectively, both forces – the southern armed wing and the regulars from the north were part of PAVN,[5] and are treated as such in official communist histories of the war.[6
The North Vietnamese (the main force of the peoples liberation armed forces ) used the conventional and Guerrilla methods of warfare to fight off/ defeat the south Vietnamese army and the U.S army during the Vietnamese war.
A total war includes the use of both conventional and unconventional ( guerrilla ) methods of warfare because it comprises of an unlimited scope of war involving but civilian and military targets. this was the strategy employed by North Vietnamese to defeat U.S and south Vietnam, this type of strategy is usually employed by smaller nations when they are combating larger nations
